Robinson D. Becoming a Translator. An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Translation
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The user's view 17
What we can do, as translators and translation teachers, is to reframe the question
of speed from an internal viewpoint, a translator-orientation. How can we enhance
the translator's speed without simply mechanizing it? More on this in the next
chapter.
Cost
Reliably, rapidly — and above all cheaply. Cost controls virtually all translation. A
translation that the client considers too expensive will not be done. A translation
that the translator considers too cheap may not get done either, if the translator has
a strong enough sense of self-worth, or an accurate enough sense of the market, to
refuse to work virtually for free. Private persons with a book they would like
translated and no knowledge of the market may call a translator and ask how much
it would cost to have the book translated; when they hear the ballpark figure they
are typically shocked. "I was thinking maybe a couple hundred! Certainly not five
thousand!" Where translators are professionally unorganized — as they are in most
of the world — a small group of quasi-professional translators can undercut
professional translators' fees and make those fees seem exorbitant, even when by
translating at those market rates 40—60 hours per week a translator can just barely
stay above the poverty line. When "quality" or reliability suffers as a result (and it
almost always does), it is easy to blame the result on all translators, on the profession
as a whole.
Trade-offs
From a user's "external" point of view, obviously, the ideal translation would be
utterly reliable, available immediately, and free. Like most ideals, this one is
impossible. Nothing is utterly reliable, everything takes time, and there ain't no such
thing as a free lunch.
Even in a less than ideal world, however, one can still hope for the best possible
realistic outcome: a translation that is reasonably reliable, delivered in good time
before the deadline, and relatively inexpensive. Unfortunately, even these lowered
expectations are often unreasonable, and trade-offs have to be considered:
• The closer one attempts to come to perfect reliability, the more the translation will cost
and the longer it will take (two or three translators, each of whom checks the
others' work, will improve reliability and speed while adding cost and time).
• The shorter the time span allowed for the translation, the more it will cost and the harder
it will be to guarantee reliability (one translator who puts aside all other work to
do a job quickly will charge a rush fee, and in her rush and mounting exhaustion
may make — and fail to catch — stupid mistakes; a group of translators will cost
more, and may introduce terminological inconsistencies).
18 The user's view
• The less one is willing to pay for a translation, the harder it will he to ensure reliability
and to protect against costly delays (the only translators willing to work at a cut
rate are non-professionals whose language, research, translation, and editing
skills may be wholly inadequate to the job; a non-professional working alone
may also take ill and not be able to tell another translator how to pick up where
s/he left off, or may lack the professional discipline needed to set and maintain
a pace that will ensure timely completion).
These real-world limitations on the user's dream of instant reliable translation
free of charge are the translator's professional salvation. If users could get exactly
what they wanted, they either would not need us or would be able to dictate the
nature and cost of our labor without the slightest consideration for our needs.
Because we need to get paid for doing work that we enjoy, we must be willing to
meet nontranslating users' expectations wherever possible; but because those
expectations can never be met perfectly, users must be willing to meet us halfway
I wonder if anyone on the list has had an experience
similar to mine. I work at a large company on a contract
basis. I've been with them, off and on, for over 2.5 years
now. At present, I work full-time, some part-time, and
often — overtime. The work load is steady, and they see
that the need in my services is constant. They refuse to
hire me permanently, though. Moreover, they often hire
people who are engineers, bilingual, but without linguis-
tic skills or translator credentials, or abilities. The
management doesn't seem to care about the quality of
translation, even though they have had a chance to find out
the difference between accurate translation and sloppy
language, because it has cost them time and money to
unravel some of the mistakes of those pseudo-translators.
I know that I will be extraordinarily lucky if they ever
decide to hire me on a permanent basis.
Ethically, I can't tell them that the work of other
people is ... hm . . . substandard. Most engineers with
whom I have been working closely know what care I take
to convey the material as accurately as possible, and how
much more efficient the communication becomes when they
have a good translator. I also know that it is supposed
to be a part of translator's job to educate his/her
clients. I tried that .... <sigh.>
Rina
The user's view 19
as well. Any user who wants a reliable translation will have to pay market rates for
it and allow a reasonable time period for its completion; anyone who wants a reliable
translation faster than that will have to pay above market rates. This is simple
economics; and users understand economics. We provide an essential service; the
products we create are crucial for the smooth functioning of the world economy,
politics, the law, medicine, and so on; much as users may dream of bypassing the
trade-offs of real-world translating, then, they remain dependent on what we do,
and must adjust to the realities of that situation.
This is not to say that we are in charge, that we are in a position to dictate terms,
or that we can ever afford to ignore users' dreams and expectations. If users want
to enhance reliability while increasing speed and decreasing cost, we had better be
aware of those longings and plan for them. This book doesn't necessarily offer such
a plan; such a plan may not even exist yet. What it offers instead is a translator-
oriented approach to the field, one that begins with what translators actually do and
how they feel about doing it — without ever forgetting the realities of meeting users'
needs. In Chapter 2 I will be redefining from the translator's perspective the
territory we have been exploring here in Chapter 1: the importance of reliability,
income, and enjoyment, that last a subjective translator experience that is completely
irrelevant to users but may mean the difference between a productive career and
burnout.
Discussion
1 The ethics of translation has often been thought to consist of the translator
assuming an entirely external perspective on his or her work, thinking about
it purely from the user's point of view: thinking, for example, that accuracy is
the only possible goal of translation; that the translator has no right to a personal
opinion or interpretation; that the finished product, the translated text, is
the only thing that matters. What other ethical considerations are important?
Is it possible to allow translators their full humanity — their opinions,
interpretations, likes and dislikes, enthusiasms and boredoms — while still
insisting on ethical professional behavior that meets users' expectations?
2 Translators are usually, and understandably, hostile toward machine translation
systems, which promise clients enormous increases in speed at a fraction of the
cost of human translation. Translators typically point to the low quality or
reliability of machine-translated texts, but in some technical fields, where style
is not a high priority, the use of constrained source languages (specially written
so as to be unambiguous for machine parsing) makes reliability possible along
with speed and low cost. How should translators meet this challenge? Translate
faster and charge less? Retrain to become pre- and post-editors of machine
translation texts? Learn to translate literature?
20 The user's view
Exercises
1 List the stereotyped character traits of your country, your region, your
group (gender, class, race, education level, etc.). Next list user-oriented
ideals for the translator — the personal characteristics that would make
a translator "good" or "reliable" in the eyes of a non-translating employer
or client. Now compare the lists, paying special attention to the
mismatches — the character traits that would make people like you
"unqualified" for the translation field — and discuss the transformations
that would be required in either the people who want to be translators
or in society's thinking about translation to make you a good translator.
2 Dramatize a scene in the conference room of a large international
corporation that needs a text translated into the executives' native
language by a certain date. What are the parameters of the discussion?
What are the main issues? What are the pressures and the worries? Try
to perceive translation as much as possible from this "external" point of
view.
3 Work in small groups to list as many different types of translation user
(including the same user in different use situations) as you can. Then
identify the type of text reliability that each would be likely to favor —
what each would want a "good" translation to do, or be like.
4 Break up into groups of three, in each group a source-language user, a
target-language user, and a translator. Take a translation use-situation
from this chapter and try to negotiate (a) who is going to commission
and pay for the translation, the source or target user or both (who stands
to benefit most from it? which user has economic power over the other?)
and (b) how much money is available to pay the translator (will the
translator, who is a professional, do it for that money?).
Suggestions for further reading
Anderman, Rogers, and del Valle (2003), Bowker (2002), Gutt (1992), Hewson and Martin
(1991), Holz-Manttari (1984), Jones (1997), Mikkelson (2000b), Phelan (2001), Pym
(1992a, 1993, 1995), Sofer (2000), Trujillo (1999)
2 Internal knowledge:
the translator's view
• Who are translators?
• Professional pride
• Reliability
• Involvement in the profession
• Ethics
• Income
• Speed
• Translation memory software
• Project management
• Raising the status of the profession
• Enjoyment
• Discussion
• Exercises
• Suggestions for further reading
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HESIS: While translators must meet the needs of translation users in order
to make a living, it is also important for them to integrate those needs into a
translator-oriented perspective on the work, seeing the reliability that users demand
in the larger context of professional pride (including also involvement in the
profession and ethics); seeing the timeliness users want in terms of enhanced
income, requiring speed but also connected to project management and raising the
status of the profession; and insisting on the importance of actually enjoying
the work.
Who are translators?
What does it take to be a translator or interpreter? What kind of person would even
want to, let alone be able to, sit at a computer or in court day after day turning
words and phrases in one language into words and phrases in another? Isn't this an
awfully tedious and unrewarding profession?
It can be. For many people it is. Some people who love it initially get tired of it,
burn out on it, and move on to other endeavors. Others can only do it on the side,
a few hours a day or a week or even a month: they are writers or teachers or editors
by day, but for an hour every evening, or for an afternoon one or two Saturdays a
month, they translate, sometimes for money, sometimes for fun, mostly (one hopes)
for both. If a really big job comes along and the timing and money are right, they
will spend a whole week translating, eight to ten hours a day; but at the end of that
week they feel completely drained and are ready to go back to their regular work.
Other people, possibly even the majority (though to my knowledge there are no
statistics on this), translate full time — and don't burn out. How do they do it? What
skills do they possess that makes it possible for them to "become" doctors, lawyers,
engineers, poets, business executives, even if only briefly and on the computer
screen? Are they talented actors who feel comfortable shifting from role to role?
How do they know so much about specialized vocabularies? Are they walking
dictionaries and encyclopedias? Are they whizzes at Trivial Pursuit?
These are the questions we'll be exploring throughout the book; but briefly, yes,
translators and (especially) interpreters do all have something of the actor in them,
the mimic, the impersonator, and they do develop remarkable recall skills that will
enable them to remember a word (often in a foreign language) that they have heard
The translator's view 23
only once. Translators and interpreters are voracious and omnivorous readers,
people who are typically in the middle of four books at once, in several languages,
fiction and nonfiction, technical and humanistic subjects, anything and everything.
They are hungry for real-world experience as well, through travel, living abroad for
extended periods, learning foreign languages and cultures, and above all paying
attention to how people use language all around them: the plumber, the kids'
teachers, the convenience store clerk, the doctor, the bartender, friends and
colleagues from this or that region or social class, and so on. Translation is often
called a profession of second choice: many translators were first professionals in
other fields, sometimes several other fields in succession, and only turned to
translation when they lost or quit those jobs or moved to a country where they were
unable to practice them; as translators they often mediate between former colleagues
in two or more different language communities. Any gathering of translators is
certain to be a diverse group, not only because well over half of the people there
will be from different countries, and almost all will have lived abroad, and all will
shift effortlessly in conversation from language to language, but because by necessity
translators and interpreters carry a wealth of different "selves" or "personalities"
around inside them, ready to be reconstructed on the computer screen whenever
My father worked for the international area of a major
Brazilian bank. As a consequence, I lived in 8 countries
and 10 cities between the ages of 1 and 19. My parents
learned the languages of the places we lived in "on
location". My father never wanted us (my 3 brothers and
I) to study in American or French schools (which can be
found anywhere), but instead forced us to learn and study
in the language of the place. My parents encouraged travel
and language studies, and since I was 14, I traveled alone
throughout Europe. I learned the 3Rs in Spanish, did high
school in Italian and Portuguese. In Luxembourg, I studied
at the European School in three languages at the same time
(French, English and Italian) and spoke Portuguese at
home. Italian used to be choice for girlfriends:-)
The outcome: I speak Portuguese, English, Spanish,
Italian, and French and translate from one into the other.
I have always worked with the set of languages I learned
in my youth. I have started learning Russian, but I didn't
like my teacher's accent. For the future, I plan to study
Chinese (I have a brother who lives in Taiwan and a nephew
who speaks it fluently) .
Renato Beninatto
24 The translator's view
a new text arrives, or out into the airwaves whenever a new speaker steps up to the
podium. A crowd of translators always seems much bigger than the actual bodies
present.
But then there are non-translators who share many of these same characteristics:
diplomats, language teachers, world travelers . . . What special skills make a well-
traveled, well-read language lover a translator?
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the primary characteristics of a good translator are
similar to the expectations translation users have for the ideal translation: a good
translator is reliable and fast, and will work for the going rate. From an internal
point of view, however, the expectations for translation are rather different than
they look from the outside. For the translator, reliability is important mainly as a
source of professional pride, which also includes elements that are of little or no
significance to translation users; speed is important mainly as a source of increased
income, which can be enhanced through other channels as well; and it is extremely
important, perhaps even most important of all, that the translator enjoy the work,
a factor that is of little significance to outsiders. Let's consider these three "internal"
requirements in order: professional pride, income, and enjoyment.
Professional pride
From the user's point of view, it is essential to be able to rely on translation — not
only on the text, but on the translator as well, and generally on the entire translation
process. Because this is important to the people who pay the bills, it will be
important to the translator as well; the pragmatic considerations of keeping your
job (for in-house people) or continuing to get offered jobs (for freelancers) will
mandate a willingness to satisfy an employer's or client's needs.
But for the translator or interpreter a higher consideration than money or
continued employability is professional pride, professional integrity, professional
self-esteem. We all want to feel that the job we are doing is important, that we do
it well, and that the people we do it for appreciate our work. Most people, in fact,
would rather take professional pride in a job that pays less than get rich doing things
they don't believe in. Despite the high value placed on making a lot of money (and
certainly it would be nice!), a high salary gives little pleasure without pride in
the work.
The areas in and through which translators typically take professional pride are
reliability, involvement in the profession, and ethics.
Reliability
As we saw in Chapter 1, reliability in translation is largely a matter of meeting the
user's needs: translating the texts the user needs translated, in the way the user
wants them translated, by the user's deadline. The demands placed on the translator
The translator's view 25
by the attempt to be reliable from the user's point of view are sometimes impossible;
sometimes disruptive to the translator's private life; sometimes morally repugnant;
often physically and mentally exhausting. If the demands are at all possible, however,
in many or even most cases the translator's desire to take professional pride in
reliability will override these other considerations, and s/he will stay up all night
doing a rush job, cancel a pleasant evening outing with a friend, or translate a text
reliably that s/he finds morally or politically loathsome.
Professional pride in reliability is the main reason we will spend hours hunting
down a single term. What is our pay for that time? Virtually nothing. But it feels
enormously important to get it right: to find exactly the right term, the right spelling,
the right phrasing, the right register. Not just because the client expects it; also
because if you didn't do it right, your professional pride and job satisfaction would
be diminished.
Involvement in the profession
It is a matter of little or no concern to translation users, but of great importance to
translators, what translator associations or unions we belong to, what translator
conferences we go to, what courses we take in the field, how we network with other
translators in our region and language pair(s). These "involvements" sometimes
help translators translate better, which is important for users and thus for the pride
we take in reliability. More crucially, however, they help us feel better about being
translators; they enhance our professional self-esteem, which will often sustain us
emotionally through boring and repetitive and low-paid jobs. Reading about
translation, talking about translation with other translators, discussing problems
and solutions related to linguistic transfer, user demands, nonpayment, and the like,
taking classes on translation, attending translator conferences, keeping up with
technological developments in the field, buying and learning to use new software
and hardware — all this gives us the strong sense that we are are not isolated
underpaid flunkies but professionals surrounded by other professionals who share
our concerns. Involvement in the translation profession may even give us the
intellectual tools and professional courage to stand up to unreasonable demands, to
educate clients and employers rather than submit meekly and seethe inwardly.
Involvement in the profession helps us realize that translation users need us as much
as we need them: they have the money we need; we have the skills they need. And
we will sell those skills to them, not abjectly, submissively, wholly on their terms,
but from a position of professional confidence and strength.
Ethics
The professional ethics of translation have traditionally been defined very narrowly:
it is unethical for the translator to distort the meaning of the source text. As we
26 The translator's view
have seen, this conception of translator ethics is far too narrow even from the user's
point of view: there are many cases when the translator is explicitly asked to "distort"
the meaning of the source text in specific ways, as when adapting a text for
television, a children's book, or an advertising campaign.
From the translator's internal point of view, the ethics of translation are more
complicated still. What is the translator to do, for example, when asked to translate
a text that s/he finds offensive? Or, to put that differently, how does the translator
proceed when professional ethics (loyalty to the person paying for the translation)
clash with personal ethics (one's own political and moral beliefs)? What does the
feminist translator do when asked to translate a blatantly sexist text? What does
the liberal translator do when asked to translate a neo-Nazi text? What does the
environmentalist translator do when asked to translate an advertising campaign for
an environmentally irresponsible chemical company?
As long as thinking about translation has been entirely dominated by an external
(nontranslator) point of view, these have been nonquestions — questions that have
not been asked, indeed that have been unaskable. The translator translates whatever
texts s/he is asked to translate, and does so in a way that satisfies the translation
user's needs. The translator has no personal point of view that has any relevance at
all to the act of translation.
From an internal point of view, however, these questions must be asked. Trans-
lators are human beings, with opinions, attitudes, beliefs, and feelings. Translators
who are regularly required to translate texts that they find abhorrent may be able
to suppress their revulsion for a few weeks, or months, possibly even years; but they
will not be able to continue suppressing those negative feelings forever. Translators,
like all professionals, want to take pride in what they do; if a serious clash between
their personal ethics and an externally defined professional ethics makes it difficult
or impossible to feel that pride, they will eventually be forced to make dramatic
decisions about where and under what conditions they want to work.
And so increasingly translators are beginning to explore new avenues by which
to reconcile their ethics as human beings with their work as translators. The
Quebecoise feminist translator Susanne Lotbiniere-Harwood (1991), for example,
tells us that she no longer translates works by men: the pressure is too great to adopt
a male voice, and she refuses to be coopted. In her literary translations of works by
women she works very hard to help them create a woman-centered language in the
target culture as well. In The Subversive Scribe Suzanne Jill Levine (1992) tells us that
in her translations of flagrantly sexist Latin American male authors, she works —
often with the approval and even collaboration of the authors themselves — to subvert
their sexism.
This broader "internal" definition of translator ethics is highly controversial. For
many translators it is unthinkable to do anything that might harm the interests of
the person or group that is paying for the translation (the translation "commissioner"
or "initiator"). For other translators, the thought of being rendered utterly powerless